Personal styles profiling provides powerful insights which allow us to manage ourselves, and our relationships better, and become more effective as part of a team.

Profiling helps us to understand:

• Our behaviour; why we are motivated to do some things and less motivated to do others.
• Our approach to tasks, reactions under pressure, communication style, how we interact with others.
• How others, including colleagues and clients, see us.
• Our strengths and limitations, and plan how to maximise those strengths and handle our weaknesses, either by developing those areas or compensating for them, or avoiding playing to them.

Personal styles profiling, crucially, also helps us to understand others and what makes them tick; their communication style, what motivates, de-motivates, excites and irritates them.

When we put together our understanding of ourselves and others we can begin to see why we get on with some people better than others. This helps us grow beyond the unhelpful and self-limiting habit that many of us have of judging people who are different to us as wrong, or problematic. It helps us appreciate what they do bring, and allows us to improve how we communicate and interact with people, reducing tension and potential for conflict and building trust, rapport and getting the best from our relationships with them.

Personal profiling also helps us understand more clearly how a range of behavioural styles are needed to build a balanced team: A team where people complement each other, benefiting from each others’ strengths and making each others’ weaknesses irrelevant. This understanding helps us develop the invaluable skill of being able to work effectively in teams with people who are very different to us.

Personal Profile Analysis (PPA)

We use Thomas International’s Personal Profile Analysis (PPA), which has a proven track record and a global reputation. The PPA is a series of 24 questions based on a fixed choice ‘first-impressions’ basis, taking no longer than seven minutes to complete. The answers are then charted on a graph under the headings Dominance, Influence, Steadiness and Compliance (DISC), which, in outline, mean:

  D – Dominance

• High “D” – demanding, forceful, strong willed, determined.
• Low “D” – conservative, cooperative, cautious, mild, modest.

  I – Influence

• High “I” – convincing, magnetic, enthusiastic, optimistic, gregarious.
• Low “I” – fact/logic-based, unemotional, suspicious, critical.

  S – Steadiness / stability

• High “S” – calm, patient, predictable, stable, consistent.
• Low “S” – restless, impatient, impulsive, “shoot from the hip”.

  C – Compliance

• High “C” – cautious, careful, diplomatic, accurate, tactful.
• Low “C” – independent, stubborn, creative.

The questionnaire can be completed on-line in eight minutes. When the report is produced, we meet with people to help them interpret and understand the report and identify what useful development action they can take.

Other applications

Thomas International offers a suite of products around the PPA to help manage and develop people from recruitment to retirement. These include:

• Recruiting the right people: Job analysis can be used in recruitment to make sure that we have the right people for the post and are not making the costly, frustrating and time-consuming error of putting square pegs into round holes. Interview questions can also be generated from a comparison between a job profiles and a candidate profile. These help to explore potential differences between job requirements and what the person brings in terms of style and fit with the culture.
• Ongoing coaching, performance management and development: Job analysis can also be useful in coaching, to help people develop their capabilities to more fully fit the job requirements.
• Developing the culture and managing change: Helps us to identify the kind of culture we need to develop to achieve the business or team goals, match it with the profiles of the people in the team, see if the balance is right and identify any development points.

Client comments:

• We have found PPA both easy to use and widely applicable. When used in coaching ensures an informed meaningful discussion of relevant factors.
• The assessment enables people to get a much better understanding of themselves.
• PPA gives them a clear understanding of the impact their behaviour has on the people who work with and for them. Part of the feedback highlights how they work under pressure. One of the Directors we were working with had never really given this any consideration before and looking at the graphs really got him thinking about how he impacted on others around him. It gave a solid base to move forward.